The Wrong Man
The Wrong Man was produced and released in 1956.
Cast
Henry Fonda... Christopher Emanuel 'Manny' Balestrero
Vera Miles... Rose Balestrero
Anthony Quayle... Frank D. O'Connor
Harold J. Stone... Det. Lt. Bowers
Charles Cooper... Det. Matthews
John Heldabrand... Tomasini
Esther Minciotti... Mama Balestrero
Doreen Lang... Ann James
Laurinda Barrett... Constance Willis
Norma Connolly... Betty Todd
Nehemiah Persoff... Eugene 'Gene' Conforti
Lola D'Annunzio... Olga Conforti, Manny's Sister
Kippy Campbell... Robert Balestrero
Robert Essen... Gregory Balestrero
Richard Robbins... Daniel, the guilty man
Dayton Lummis... Judge Groat
Peggy Webber... Miss Dennerly
The Wrong Man Motif
In many Hitchcock movies an innocent man is escaping from the police (and often also the bad guys).
- The Lodger, 1926/1927
- The 39 Steps, 1935
- Young and Innocent, 1937/1938
- Saboteur, 1942
- Spellbound, 1944/1945
- Strangers on a Train, 1950/1951
- I Confess, 1952/1953
- To Catch a Thief, 1954/1955
- The Wrong Man, 1956
- North by Northwest 1958/1959
- Frenzy, 1971/1972
Alfred Hitchcock on the double-exposure scene in The Wrong Man: " If you take a real case, then you are restricted and bound. As a matter of fact, I think I made an error myself when I made that little film, The Wrong Man, in which I had to follow everything that happened in the actual case. I put in certain shots which I shouldn't have. For example, I wanted to show, at the moment when the real man is discovered, that he and the wrong man looked very much alike. I did it by taking a close-up of Henry Fonda whispering a prayer to the figure of Christ on the wall, and then over that big head I double-exposed a real street in Queens - and there's a man walking towards us. He gets closer and closer and comes right into close-up, and I fitted his face over that of Fonda. Fonda's face disappeared and the man turned and went into this general store and tried to hold it up. That's how he was really caught. He was knocked down by the little man who owned the store, while the wife phoned for the police. Now, I should never have done the double-exposure scene, because that never happened in the real story. I was introducing creative elements into a story that didn't need to be improved upon." (Sidney Gottlieb: Alfred Hitchcock Interviews)